Written By: Darby VanHoutan

On Thursday, June 2nd, the world recognized the first World Eating Disorder Day of Action. There were great things happening when the day arrived all around the world. Celebrities chimed in, people made it relevant with hashtags, and thousands of individuals around the world didn’t eat, made themselves throw up, or binge eat due to an eating disorder.

In April of 2011 I stood on a scale in the freezing cold room of my therapist with my crying mother. The scale read 75 lbs and the thing was, it still wasn’t low enough. My beautiful, rail-thin therapist looked at me with that “you-poor-girl” look. I felt nothing. My mom just continued to cry, asked me when the last time I ate was (it was three weeks prior- an apple a friend at lunch made me eat), and looked at me with the same look. How could they not get it? Weren’t they happy for me? I was pretty, thin, getting thinner, and I looked like the rest of my friends did. I was freezing constantly. I grew little tiny hairs everywhere to make myself warmer. I was always tired. My hair was falling out. Was I the one who didn’t get it? Whatever. This was annoying. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go on a run. I wanted to go to sleep. I wanted them to get it.

Now it’s the June of 2016 and I weigh a healthy 160. 160. If you don’t understand how hard it is for me to type out my weight onto a computer screen and share it with the world, you probably don’t fully understand eating disorders. That’s fine. I didn’t understand what a eating disorder was until I was probably 18, and I’ve dealt with mine since I was 12. I sometimes wish I could grab that girl on the scale five years ago and shake her until she gets it, but the thing is, she’s still here.

That’s the biggest stigma around eating disorders. They don’t go away. They aren’t just one-time things. I went a total of 9 months with eating little-to-nothing. With the help of my extraordinary mother, a dietitian, and a nosy therapist I began eating more. Of course, they threatened me with hospital stays, and tubes of calories into me and other things of that nature and of course I fought back. Regardless, I got “better.”

My friends all patted me on the back months later when my hair stopped falling out and you couldn’t see my ribs anymore. My mother let out a sigh of relief and I stopped seeing my dietitian. Although the 9 months was the longest and worst I ever got, I still deal with Anorexia and fight it almost daily. There are times when I won’t eat for weeks but no one will notice because I’m “better.” It was up to me at this point. I had to work with that 75 pound girl on the scale. It’s up to me now. Sometimes I wake up and feel like freaking Beyonce and it feels good. Other days I wake up and feel like a potato wearing a dress. I pick at my arms, legs, stomach, thighs, chin, back, etc. This is how almost every human being feels ever, but I have to make sure these feelings don’t make me skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Another misconception I hear almost daily is “I don’t know how anorexic girls do it! I love food. I could never be strong enough to not eat”. It takes me every ounce of myself to not just get up and walk away when people say this. However, it’s common. I’ll share something: When I don’t eat for weeks on end I don’t feel strong. It’s a thing that wears on you, kicks your ass, and then doesn’t let you up. You don’t tell anyone you’re not eating because what will they think? You feel the constant need to work out but almost faint every time you do. The strength in eating disorders is not in the person’s will to not eat but in their daily fight with the negative voices in their head telling them to just have celery that day. The strength comes in avoiding the scale and looking in the mirror and not hating what they see. The strength is in that person eating, not the other way around.

I ignored my illness for much longer than I’d like to admit. I joked with my friends about it because that’s easier than crying about it. I’m 19 years old now and when it gets brought up I’m not as shy as I once was to chime in.

To girls and boys out there who feel that they’re losing the fight to the voices inside their head; you’re not alone and what you’re feeling isn’t who you are, it’s something you have to work with. Don’t shove it down and don’t let it win. It’s not going to go away any time soon but neither are you. You’re going to put on a pair of jeans one day after eating a big breakfast and you’re going to love it. You’re going to stop getting that look. The look that makes you feel good but also really helpless; it’ll stop. You’ll look back and not want to shake the person you once were, but understand that that person is still with you and you’re working with it. You’re feeling it daily, but it’s also not your entire world like it once was. You won’t be your biggest enemy. You’ll dance, cry, laugh, kiss, eat, and you’ll talk about your eating disorder.
It may have taken the world a little too long to dedicate a day to Eating Disorder Awareness, but now that it’s here, it can’t be ignored.